Dying for Mercy with Bonus Material (27 page)

A
ll of the morning shows did pieces on the “stigmata murders,” as they were invariably being called, leading their stories with information about the newest victim, Father Michael Gehry. But KEY News had by far the best pictures, exclusive video taken inside Tuxedo Park that no other network could obtain. Linus Nazareth was thrilled, and he let B.J. and Annabelle know it in the staff meeting right after the broadcast.

“As your reward, you two can cover the police presser at one o’clock,” said Linus. “Go up and see what Chief Buzz Cut has to say today.”

After the meeting, Eliza took Annabelle and B.J. aside. “I’ll try to make it to the news conference, too,” she said. “I should be able to get there after my meeting with Valentina at noon. But first I want to tell you what occurred to me last night.”

Eliza explained that she thought the prayer card at Innis’s funeral laid out the essential elements featured in his puzzle clues. She passed the card to them.

“If the last element is air and our last clue is the plaque that reads ‘Feathered Perch,’ Innis had
birds
in mind, so I’m thinking the aviary at Pentimento is the place to look.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked B.J. “Sneak in there tonight?”

Eliza shook her head. “No, we’ll get permission from Valentina, and we’ll explore in broad daylight. But if our killer is studying the clues, too, and resorting to murder because he doesn’t want Innis’s puzzle solved, he’s not going to want us poking around in the aviary. I think we should trick our killer into exposing himself, and I have an idea of how to do it.”

T
he KEY News car pulled up in front of the carriage house, with the security car close behind.

“Now, remember,” said Eliza to Annabelle and B.J. before they got out. “Our aim is to get the killer to come into the open.”

They went inside, sat around the dining-room table, and began discussing what they’d found in the boathouse and why it was leading them to the Pentimento aviary.

The listening device in the wrought-iron chandelier picked up every single word.

F
itzroy Heavener finally answered the phone on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“It’s Clay, and I’ve got Peter on the line, too.”

Every muscle in Fitzroy’s body tightened. “I don’t know if I can bear much more,” he said.

“Well, there’s more to tell, and you’ve got to hear it,” said Clay, sternly enough to get both Peter and Fitzroy listening intently. “Eliza Blake has stumbled upon one more clue of Innis’s damned puzzle. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill that sanctimonious bastard with my bare hands.”

“What has she figured out now?” asked Peter quietly.

“I don’t know,” Clay admitted. “But she says that Innis has left a clue in that folly of an aviary he built on his property.”

“Well, what can we do about it at this point?” asked Fitzroy.

“
Do?
You’re asking me what we should
do
?” he asked with contempt. “You didn’t have to ask that question twenty years ago! We’ve got to stop her—
that’s
what we’ve got to do!”

“I don’t have the stomach for this anymore, Clay,” said Fitzroy. “Twenty years ago I was younger. And stronger.”

“All I know is,” Clay said with menace, “I haven’t kept quiet for twenty years just to let a dead man give everything away. We’ve got to get to Eliza Blake before she learns anything else.”

S
usannah stood on her balcony, looking down at Pentimento. She’d been hoping that Valentina would have called to acknowledge the flowers.

But the call hadn’t come.

She really wanted to speak with her face-to-face and gauge her feelings. Had the event on Sunday redeemed Susannah in Valentina’s eyes? Would she use her influence to help the Lansings gain admittance to the Black Tie Club?

As she watched two dark sedans pull into Pentimento’s driveway below, Susannah wondered.

Did she dare go to Valentina’s house again?

A
re you sure you’re going to be all right?” asked Annabelle as they rolled into the driveway at Pentimento. “I don’t feel good about leaving you here.”

“I’m just going to talk to Valentina about the affair with Marty,” said Eliza. “That’s something I have to do on my own. Don’t worry. The security guard will be right here.”

“Promise you won’t go to the aviary without us?” asked B.J.

“Promise,” said Eliza as she got out of the car. “I’ll try to meet up with you at the police press conference later.”

Valentina answered the door. She looked tired and drawn. Her hair, usually so perfectly coiffed, was slightly disheveled.

“I’ve been waiting for you to get here, Eliza,” she said. “I didn’t sleep much with all that’s been happening, and I was wondering what you wanted to talk about. It’s such a beautiful, warm day, one of the last ones, I suspect. I thought Bonnie could serve us a little something in the garden and we can chat there.”

Bonnie brought them tea and little chicken-salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Once she was sure the woman was out of earshot, Eliza gently introduced the motive for her visit.

“I’m really here for two reasons, Valentina. The first is very delicate and difficult to bring up.”

Valentina waited for her to continue.

“Yesterday I spoke with Bill O’Shaughnessy and—”

Before Eliza could speak another word, Valentina put up her hand to stop her.

“You don’t have to go any further, Eliza,” she said. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Well? Is it true?” Eliza asked quietly. “Did you have an affair with his brother?”

Valentina wrung her hands. “I knew it would come out someday,” she said. “It’s a miracle it didn’t happen sooner. So I suppose in some ways it’s a relief. I’ve lived with the secret for so many years. But let’s face it, my political career is over, and with how things are today, an affair in somebody’s background doesn’t seem like such a big deal. At my age it could actually make me seem more interesting and glamorous.”

“Did Innis come to feel that way?” asked Eliza. “That it wasn’t such a big deal?”

“No,” she said softly. “It bothered him, always. In fact, I’ve been thinking that maybe the affair was the reason Innis committed suicide.”

“Your relationship with Marty O’Shaughnessy happened two decades ago, Valentina. Your marriage went on, your life together was successful and productive. Why would Innis wait until now to kill himself?”

“Because he couldn’t live with what happened as a result.”

I
t was a lesson learned long ago.

It was so simple to eavesdrop when the parties you were listening to were concentrating on their own conversation. Valentina and Eliza were so engrossed in what they were saying that they didn’t suspect that their every word could be heard.

Was Valentina going to tell Eliza Blake
everything?

Would she reveal why and how the affair ended? Would she tell what everyone else had had to do to clean up the mess? Would Valentina come clean about the fact that it was she who was with Marty O’Shaughnessy when he died?

She wouldn’t be that stupid, would she?

W
hat did happen as a result of the affair?” asked Eliza.

“Oh, so many things happened, Eliza. I don’t even know where to start.” Valentina put down her teacup, leaned back in her wicker chair, and changed the subject. “You said you had two reasons for coming here today. What was the other one?”

“I wanted to ask your permission for my colleagues and me to look inside your aviary. One of our clues leads there. We have reason to think it’s the final clue, Valentina, and hope it will make clear everything Innis wanted us to know.”

Valentina stood up. “Why don’t we go down there right now?” she asked.

Eliza thought of her promise to Annabelle and B.J. that she wouldn’t go into the aviary without them. But Valentina Wheelock wasn’t a threat, and Eliza couldn’t wait to see what she could find in the aviary.

S
cores of newspeople waiting in the church parking lot received a five-minute warning from a young female police officer. Annabelle craned her neck to see if she could find Eliza. She was going to miss the start of the press conference.

Annabelle took out her BlackBerry, hit a button, and waited for Eliza to answer her cell phone. But the rings led to Eliza’s voice mail. Annabelle was about to leave a message when a uniformed officer in his late forties strode to the microphones to begin answering questions.

It was
not
Chief Clay Vitalli.

T
he birds chirped and chattered as the door to the aviary opened.

“Oh,” said Eliza. “It takes my breath away in here.”

“Yes,” said Valentina, looking up and around. “Even though I was against the place being built, Zack and Innis did a great job.”

The roomy rectangular structure had Italian stone walls and windows inset with a fine wire mesh instead of glass. A large bell-shaped dome was spacious enough for birds to fly up into it. A solid foundation and stone floors ensured that snakes, raccoons, and other wild animals would not be able to gain entrance.

The place was filled with exotic plants, flowers, and trees, and with paths for people to walk among them. Birdbaths were stationed throughout the aviary, and at various spots there were elaborate cages. But by far the building’s most impressive aspect was the floor-to-ceiling fresco on a stretch of wall in between the mesh windows.

The painting was a reproduction of the Giotto fresco that had been featured on the front of Innis’s prayer card. The image was familiar to Eliza by now, but as she stared at the painting on the wall, she sensed there was something slightly different about this version. She wished she could compare the two right now, but she’d left her bag back on the patio. She’d look at the holy card again later.

“Grapes!”

Eliza jumped as she heard the screeching sound.

“Grapes!”

It dawned on her that it was the parrot that Janie told her about, the one who’d been taught to say the things he liked.

“Sun! Air! Grapes!”

“That damned bird drives me crazy,” said Valentina. “And to think Innis spent a lot of money and countless hours with a trainer trying to teach that parrot to talk. What a waste that was. Those are the only words I’ve ever heard him say.”

Eliza and Valentina had been in the aviary for fifteen minutes, walking around but finding nothing that stood out to them as a clue, when Bonnie found them on one of the paths.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Wheelock,” she said, “but Mrs. Lansing is here again.”

Valentina closed her eyes. “Oh, I have to go speak with her. She came with flowers yesterday when I wasn’t here. I should have called and thanked her, but I didn’t get around to it. I can’t send her away again.” She looked at Eliza. “Will you be all right for a little while by yourself? This shouldn’t take long.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Eliza. “Take your time.”

W
here was the clue? Where was it?

Eliza walked along the aviary path, stopping to watch the birds flitting around in the wire cupola and alighting in the trees. She spotted finches and parakeets and a couple of cockatoos, but there were many birds she didn’t recognize at all.

She checked every single perch she could find, in birdcages and out, but nothing of any significance popped out at her. Maybe “feathered perch” was only meant to get her to the aviary, not to the actual clue.

There has to be something more
.

She looked up again at the fresco of St. Francis preaching to the birds and uttered a silent prayer.
Help me see what’s here. Help me learn what Innis wanted me to know.

As she stared at the fresco, it dawned on Eliza what was different from the image on the prayer card. St. Francis had a white halo around his head in both versions, but in the one on the wall there were words, in a beautiful medieval script, written along the inside rim of the saint’s halo.

She stretched to read.
SI TROVA TUTTO NEL TAVOLO GRANDE.

Eliza cursed herself for not speaking Italian. But she did know that
grande
meant “big” or “large,” and she was pretty sure that
tavolo
meant “table.”

Big table.

She had noticed a beautifully carved wooden table at the back of the aviary, had even noted that it was similar to one she’d seen next to Innis Wheelock’s bloody body in the greenhouse.
Could the key to Innis’s puzzle be in the big table?

She started to walk toward the back of the aviary, the sound of the creaking entry door masked by the mad chirping of all the birds.